When the city announced its new branding campaign on Tuesday, a common reaction could be generously described as underwhelmed.

Using unremarkable fonts and predictable colors, the logo says, “New Bern (in red letters), North Carolina (in black letters)” over two intertwined lines of different shades of blue, followed by the italicized tagline, “Everything comes together here.”

In my column last week, I tongue-in-cheek imagined being a one-person branding expert who uses shareware fonts and twenty-dollar clipart. Unfortunately, that’s what New Bern’s new brand looks like.

City officials were involved in the project, along with the Chamber of Commerce, tourism and business stakeholders, and Swiss Bear Downtown Development Corporation. Tuesday was an unveiling, not a trial balloon. The decision has been made to move forward with it.

The logo and tagline allow for flexibility, supporters said. Other iconic images can be added, such as the city hall clock tower or the bear that New Bern has long used to represent its links to Bern, Switzerland.

And the wording can change depending on need. For example, the Chamber of Commerce might use the logo with a sailboat along with the tagline, “Business comes together here.”

First, some quibbles: the new, optional bear logo appears to be walking and is pointed to the right; the traditional logo is that of a freshly slain bear pointed to the left. And the blue lines may broadly represent “everything coming together” but specifically represent the Neuse and Trent rivers, which don’t intersect; they converge. Also, part of New Bern’s legacy is its distinction as the birthplace of Pepsi. The tagline reminds me of one used by a soft drink company, but the other one: “Things go better with Coke.”

In his presentation Tuesday, City Manager Mike Epperson defined branding as a clear and consistent message through signs, symbols and terms that identify goods and services that make us unique. It is more than a logo and tagline, he said. It delivers on a promise, confirms credibility and creates customer loyalty. Positive branding is achieved by meeting the customer’s expectations through positive experiences, he said.

Consistent use of any logo, tagline and color scheme will accomplish all that, but what the city settled on fails to capture one key element: a sense of place.

If the logo and tagline are supposed to be an at-a-glance representation of New Bern, what do these tell us? The words “New Bern” can be replaced with any other city and still work, so in that respect the city is spending almost $160,900 for development and implementation of a generic logo.

Granted, for the $85,900 it paid consultant North Star Destination Strategies out of Tennessee, the city also received some interesting and useful demographic and marketing data, a color scheme (black, red and amber, which are already part of the traditional bear coat of arms that New Bern copied from its namesake city, Bern, Switzerland, and a fourth color: blue), and a flurry of suggested uses.

Once rolled out, the branding theme will show up on everything from the city website to signage to police cars. The city has budgeted another $75,000 for that portion of the project.

During his presentation Tuesday, Epperson showed slides of the many taglines and logos that have been used in New Bern over the years. I have my favorites, which I combined to form a logo (see illustration) and tagline that provide just as much flexibility as what North Star provided, but which undeniably does a better job of depicting a sense of place.

I did it in 20 minutes, but with more time and effort I could tweak it to be ready for primetime, and I’m sure a lot of local people reading this right now could whip together something better, too.

But our branding campaign, such as it is, has arrived and we should make the best of it. Because of its benign blandness, we’ll get used to it, of that I’m sure.

Thanks for letting me take up some of your Sunday morning.

Randy Foster is editor of the Sun Journal. He can be reached at randy.foster@newbernsj.com or 252-635-5663, or follow him on Twitter @rivereditor.